Enforcement

The most important international intellectual property agreement regulating remedies for intellectual property infringement is the 1994 WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (the TRIPS Agreement).

The governments of the United States, the European Commission, Japan, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Canada, and Mexico are negotiating a trade agreement named the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). Despite the name, the agreement is designed to address not only counterfeiting, but a wide range of intellectual property enforcement issues.

The definition of a counterfeit medicine is not well established. In 1992, the WHO defined a counterfeit medicine as: “a medicine which is deliberately and fraudulently mislabelled with respect to identity and/or source." Under this definition, it is the deliberate mislabeling of a drug or medicine which makes it a counterfeit. The US FDA uses a similar definition,

The Obama Administration, with the support of a Democrat-controlled U.S. Congress, is insisting the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) negotiations be conducted in secret. We know, from documents obtained in Europe and the summaries released in April 2009, that the draft ACTA has sections that deal with both injunctions and damages. We don’t have the current text.

On July 22, 2009, eight public interest, consumer and public health organizations wrote to the United States Trade Representative (USTR), recommending the USTR and other federal agencies reduce secrecy and increase transparency in negotiations that involve global norms for knowledge governance.

On June 18, 2009, The Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD) issued a 2,000 word resolution on the enforcement of copyright, trademarks, patents and other intellectual property rights. The resolution is on the TACD web page here. A press release from the TACD IP-Working Group, with comments from several TACD members, is available on the web here.